with his robotic twin. I don’t have to
tell you which one is Ishiguro and
which is the robot. The robot’s skin
was cast from a mold made from the
scientist’s face, the hair is real, and
the clothes are, well, human clothes.

We instantly recognize the real
Hiroshi by those subtle nuances in
facial expression, even from this still
photograph. Just as we are more
familiar with our own species, it is
also easy for us to distinguish a
synthetic robot animal from a
living creature.

The Creepy Feeling
of the Uncanny
Valley

Back in 1978, another
Japanese robotics
experimenter — Masahiro Mori
— noticed a unique situation
when people saw a series of
robots, from barely human
looking to more and more
human appearing. The more
humanlike the robots
appeared, the more people
were attracted to them — up
to a point. When it became
too realistic, people suddenly
found them creepy and
disgusting. The Einstein head
atop the Korean Hubo in

Figure 6 seems to be about as creepy
as a robot can get, yet, does an
amazing job of demonstrating two
amazing facts. David Hanson’s very
lifelike robotic head is world-class,
and the Hubo body is also one of the
world’s best life-size humanoid robots.

The animal version of the
Hubo-Einstein robot is the “Hasbro
Tour Fleshless Kitty” shown in
Figure 7. It tops the creepiness factor,
possibly edging towards sicko, in
my opinion.

In the graphs in Figure 8, the
dip in ‘likeability’ was nicknamed
the ‘uncanny valley.’ It’s the point

when something rising to perceived
perfection suddenly becomes very
imperfect. You can see from the solid
line in the graph that a stuffed animal
quickly takes a dive into the valley
when too much realism is applied to
make it a true animal-appearing robot.

The same applies to synthetic
animals; this is why Sony, Tiger, and
Axlon steered away from trying to
make their pets very realistic, besides
the great expense to develop the